Air France Crash: 113 Die, Safety Rules Change

The Concorde disaster at Charles de Gaulle Airport killed 113 people when a burst tire sent debris into the fuel tanks during takeoff, triggering an engine fire that doomed the aircraft within seconds. Investigators traced the chain of failure to a metal strip dropped on the runway by a preceding Continental Airlines DC-10. The crash exposed the aging fleet's vulnerability and accelerated the retirement of the world's only supersonic passenger aircraft. Air France Flight 4590 was a charter flight bound for New York on July 25, 2000, carrying mostly German tourists heading to a cruise ship. During the takeoff roll, the Concorde's left main gear ran over a thin titanium strip that had fallen from the thrust reverser of a Continental DC-10 that departed minutes earlier. The strip shredded one of the Concorde's tires, and a large piece of rubber struck the underside of the wing at high velocity, sending a shockwave through the fuel tank that ruptured its internal structure. Fuel poured from the wing and ignited in the engines' exhaust. The aircraft lifted off trailing a massive column of fire, climbed to approximately 200 feet, then rolled and dove into the Hotelissimo hotel in nearby Gonesse. All 109 people aboard and 4 on the ground were killed. The Concorde fleet was grounded immediately and did not return to service until November 2001, following extensive safety modifications. But the economics of supersonic travel, which had been marginal before the crash, became untenable in the post-9/11 aviation environment. Both Air France and British Airways retired their Concorde fleets in October 2003. No supersonic passenger aircraft has entered commercial service since.